


Forever is a Long Time

by L3245



Series: Forever [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Guardian!Marinette, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Identity Reveal, Romance, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23423044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L3245/pseuds/L3245
Summary: The final battle goes horribly wrong. Backed into a corner, Marinette has to make a choice.Based off of Halsey's song of the same name. Written for the Miraculous Ladybug Discord March 2020 Challenge.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Forever [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684930
Comments: 11
Kudos: 88
Collections: March 2020 - Music





	Forever is a Long Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the-river-of-light](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=the-river-of-light).



> For the-river-of-light#5046! at the Miraculous Ladybug Discord March 2020 Challenge. I am... really pushing it with the time limit, haha. I'm sorry for the wait. And the shitty description. Title. Things. Enjoy, hah.

Heart, hammering relentlessly at the walls of her ribcage. Heart, working overtime to keep up with her racing across Paris’s rooftops, to sustain the breaths coming out in short, shallow, broken gasps. Heart, shattered by the look on his face when—

-x-

It’s their third Valentine’s together, and the first that she had agreed to spend with him—“as friends,” Ladybug had stressed with a half-exasperated, half-playful sigh, to which Chat Noir had replied with a, “but of course,” and a roguish grin. It’s a much simpler affair compared to Chat’s first attempt at spending Valentine’s with her, with only a basket of dinner and a bouquet of roses to accompany them on one of Paris’s many abandoned rooftops. That, and the view of a glowing Eiffel Tower. They had just finished a rather enjoyable dinner when she notices something odd about the bouquet of flowers.

“Silly kitty. One of these are fake,” Ladybug snickers. Her time spent in her balcony garden allowed her to easily pick out the plastic flower hiding amongst the real in the bouquet. She held it out to Chat Noir expectantly, but he just sat there, leaning on his elbows and tilting his head.

Chat smiled at her. It wasn’t one of his wicked grins, coy simpers, or charming smirks. It was an honest smile, full of patient love and hope. Ladybug’s heart skips a beat. For a moment, she can imagine another boy with golden blonde hair and jade green eyes, and she feels exactly the same way. Then her superhero partner continues and she feels the guilt settle inside her chest.

“I know. I figured that flowers are nice, but they don’t really express what I feel for you, milady. They die, for one…”

And that his love for her wouldn’t, remained unspoken between them. She had hummed thoughtfully at him that night, a hot blush settling over her cheekbones, but had said nothing more.

He turns out to be right. The one plastic rose remains in the vase of water long after its living counterparts have wilted into dead, brittle husks. Alone, it stands proudly, the sole recipient of Marinette’s unnecessary watering.

She curses it, sometimes, for being so stubborn. It, and him, but mostly herself for encouraging him.

-x-

Her earrings give out their last, final beat. Ladybug manages to duck into her top-floor bedroom before detransforming into her civilian persona, Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Dimly, the teenager registers Tikki fluttering weakly to the ground, a soft cry of “Marinette…” that went without a response. She can’t pay any attention to the kwami right now, she can’t look at anything other than the slick red coating her hands. Numbly, she raises her hands and stares at the tiny black shards embedded into the skin.

They called her Ladybug because of the suit she wears, a bright, innocent red piece with playful spots black. He will call her a murderer for the crimson coloring her fingers, broken only by the black pieces of the butterfly miraculous. 

Hawkmoth was dead.

His lifeblood stained her clothes, her body, evidence of the struggle between a detransformed Gabriel Agreste and Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She shouldn’t have won. Chat Noir had been flung halfway across Paris with only a few seconds left in his timer. Tikki was timed out herself, huddling in the corner eating as quickly as she could while protecting an earring that had been savagely ripped out. Gabriel was older, stronger, wiser. In no universe should she have come out on top of the older man.

But she did. Like recalling an event that happened to someone else, Marinette recalled the utter shock on the supervillain’s face before he had lunged at her. Their struggling and grappling in the Agreste office while Mayura—Nathalie, oh god—clutched her chest from the sidelines and struggled to breathe through horrific-sounding coughs, while Tikki and Nooroo watched, unable to interfere. The way the butterfly miraculous had felt in her hands when she scooped it from the pristine white floors. The tearing of the skin of her palm as she squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed until the miraculous—black in her hands, black and red and beautiful in its design—shattered. The feeling of cold power as she plunged the sharpened edges of a wing into Gabriel Agreste’s heart.

Once, then twice, thrice, so many times she lost count. This man had hurt her partner, hurt Paris, and everyone she loved for far too long. And for what? To bring back the mother for a son he abused and neglected for years? She thinks Nathalie may have cried out his name in between those coughs, or maybe that was Nooroo, or Tikki, or…

The heavy double-doors had flung open to reveal a very-out-of-breath Adrien and his voice is the one that pulls her out of her haze.

“M-Marinette? You’re… you’re…”

She’s never been good with words.

-x-

He asked her the question last night.

“Say, milady,” Chat ventured slowly. He leaned on his baton towards her, but his eyes were distant, fixated on some faraway point on the night horizon. “This is gonna be it, isn’t it?”

She had nodded then. The plan was set. The pieces were falling into place. Now, nearly four years since Ladybug and Chat Noir began their war against Hawkmoth, it was all coming to an end. They had narrowed down the list of Hawkmoth suspects to one possible man: Gabriel Agreste. Tomorrow, they would confront him and reclaim control of the butterfly miraculous and hopefully ascertain the whereabouts of the long-absent peacock miraculous. Tomorrow, Paris would have no more need of their mischievous Rena Rouge, sassy Queen Bee, stalwart Carapace, or any of the other superheroes that had stepped up when their time came.

They would have no more need of Ladybug and Chat Noir.

“It looks like it,” she murmurs quietly. Regardless of how the confrontation panned out, Ladybug and Chat Noir would be no more. Either they would be defeated and their miraculouses used for some nefarious purpose, or any sort of supernatural evil that required their help would be dealt with permanently.

“It doesn’t have to be,” her blonde-haired partner replies, and they both know he’s not just talking about the war, the battle. “We—” whatever they were, Ladybug couldn’t quite label, and it does things to her heart that she isn’t quite ready to face. After the battle, after all of this was over “—could keep in touch. Stay together.” Chat wiggles his eyebrows at her in a show of playfulness, but it’s easy for Ladybug to read how completely serious he was.

Her throat is dry. She recovers after a beat of silence that was a little too long. “Oh?” she asks, falling into the ease of teasing him with sarcasm and quips. Hiding. “And for how long?”

“Yes. Forever, if you will.”

I—yes, yes. Let’s. You’re one of my most precious people. I never want you to leave. I don’t think I can imagine going on without you. Let’s.

But she doesn’t say it. Instead, “Forever is a long time,” the black-haired girl quips. “Silly kitty, you’re not that great company. Fur all over the place.” She flicks his hair and curses her tongue for substituting honesty for sarcasm.

“I’ll have you know I can be a purr-etty great guy, bugaboo,” he coos, launching into a show of displaying his assets to hide the hurt in his eyes.

Ladybug thinks that it’s for the best. She doesn’t deserve him, or his love, not when despite the feelings she has growing for the superhero, she still harbors a deep affection for a boy who will never see her the same way.

-x-

Marinette grits her teeth, blinks back tears. She can taste the copper on her tongue, feel sticky liquid run down her forearms as she covers her eyes and sinks to the ground. The way Adrian had sounded echoed in her mind. Shock. Horrified. Dark thoughts crash around in her head like a mantra. 

He hates me. He hates me, he hates me, he hates me he hates me he hates me. I killed his father, I killed his father, I killed him I killed him I killed him I killed him. 

There would be consequences to this. Nathalie saw it, Adrian saw it. Chat Noir, bless his heart, was absent from the scene and was not there to see her lose control. Ladybug or not, murder was still murder. She had allowed her rage to get the better of her and took judgment into her own hands. Because of her, Adrien would have to live without a father in addition to his comatose mother. Of course, he would never forgive her for that. He had seen her face, and that was weapon enough. The truth would come to light, of her being Ladybug.

Her identity was forfeit. The identities of the other miraculous users were, too. And Chat Noir…

Chat Noir would know what to say. More than ever, she needed his warm support, his constant reassuring presence.

-x-

Her eyes are red, her face is streaked and swollen, and her body runs with little tremors that the skintight suit of the miraculous does nothing to hide. Curled up at the top of the Eiffel Tower—the symbol of love, hah!—Ladybug knew she must have made for a pretty pathetic sight. She had thought that at least this high up amongst the metal beams, there would be no one to see her show weakness, to cry and scream and rage at the unfairness of it all. She should have known better.

“Hey, bugaboo,” Chat Noir murmurs, landing gracefully a few feet away. She doesn’t reply, just keeps staring off into the distance and crying silent tears, but she doesn’t tell him to go away and that’s invitation enough. He approaches her cautiously.

“He—” she hiccups, and almost breaks down again, but he gently lays a hand on her back “—he’s in… he’s in love with someone else. I—I’ll never be g-good enough for him, I—”

Poisonous thoughts, lies, told by a snake of a girl that whispered into her ear when all other witnesses were absent. She had tried her best to ignore them, but the words were poison, seeping deep into old, reopened wounds to her core.

After all, Adrien had never noticed her like that. And he did say he was in love with someone else. Maybe she was unlovable, unlikable as the clumsy, tongue-tied, prissy, shy, boring, insecure Marinette, who was nothing like Ladybug. Maybe—

But Chat was always there, letting her rage until the fury was gone, then cutting her open and sucking the poison out with gentle words, gentle touches, and a gentle love.

She thinks that she might love him. She thinks herself cruel for treating him the same way she is being treated. She thinks she would not deserve him.

-x-

“Marinette… Marinette,” Tikki calls out to her softly. “We need to get that out of your hand.”

The black-haired teenager blinks blearily at the red kwami. At some point, Tikki regained enough energy to fly up and caress the bloody palm. The shards of the broken butterfly miraculous lay in a neat, albeit gory pile on the floor, the red a garish sight against the soft pinks of the bedroom. A flitter of purple flirts at the edges of her vision, alerting her of Nooroo’s presence. She smiles joylessly. The purple kwami was probably terrified of her, maybe even moreso than it had been of Hawkmoth—Gabriel Agreste.

“Tikki… Adrien knows I’m Ladybug now,” Marinette states emotionlessly. 

Tikki pauses from her fussing over her wielder’s wounds. “Yes, Marinette, he knows that you are Ladybug, that his father is Hawkmoth, and that his father’s secretary is Mayura,” she responds slowly. “But it’ll be all right, Marinette—”

Marinette doesn’t catch the rest of it, once more lost in her own thoughts. Adrien Agreste knew her identity, but he didn’t know Chat Noir’s, or any of the other users. If he came after her with the whole of Paris’s police force, there was a high chance that the identities of the others’ were compromised. 

Chat… I’m sorry.

“Tikki… it really is the end. Like he said. He didn’t mean it like this, but… it’s the only way, isn’t it? I need to protect him.” 

The kwami stops, looks at her with eyes wide. “Marinette, are you—”

The beautiful friendship she had with Adrien, soiled with an offhand declaration of love for another and years of built-up self-hatred. The trusting relationship and budding affection she held with Chat Noir, soon to be destroyed with a decision she was about to make by herself. 

She never could hold a perfect thing without destroying it.

“No, no, Marinette, don’t!” Tikki cries, fluttering around her frantically. She had worked long enough with Marinette to see where the girl’s thought process was leading to. For all her berating Chat Noir for being too eager to carry the burden, being too self-sacrificial, Ladybug was even worse.

“Tikki, I don’t want to be Ladybug anymore.”

“MARINETTE!”

Then silence. The kwami don’t appear when they are rejected. She had learned that long ago. Marinette feels her heart splintering but thinks that it will be okay soon. She meets the eyes of a silent Nooroo, who simply nods and vanishes from her sight as well.

She takes a scalding-hot shower, her body protesting from the fateful encounter, cleans up her wounds as best she can. Practices in front of the mirror an excuse that she may or may not remember for how she roughed up her palm—clumsy Marinette, tripping over onto gravel again! Writes a note with the name of her school and class number, hoping Chat Noir would be able to figure out the miraculous holders from there. Considers writing a separate letter to tell her partner that she was sorry, that she loved him too, just as much maybe, but that she had to protect him when she took the fall. Eventually doesn’t, and instead pens a simple “I’m sorry” on a post-it note stuck to the back of the list.

She gathers up the ladybug miraculous and gently places it inside its assigned compartment, a compartment she thought she would never have to use. The butterfly miraculous Marinette picks up in a bandage-covered hand.

“Nooroo.” The kwami appears. “Take the box to Chat Noir. Tell him… tell him the bad news. And tell Adrien I’m sorry too.” She wasn’t strong enough to do it herself and wouldn’t be able to after this.

Then Marinette turns away with a sad smile, recalling soft green eyes and how right they looked when turned to her. Just right. Just like that. She had to protect Chat and the others, protect him like she couldn’t Adrien from the ugly truth, like she couldn’t Hawkmoth from herself. Whatever happened next, she couldn’t bring him down too.

“I, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, hereby relinquish the Miracle Box, and name Chat Noir the new Guardian.”

**Author's Note:**

> Possible sequel soon, most likely written with actual effort instead of mindless rambling done over a span of 2 hours. I hope it wasn't too bad though, haha. Thanks for reading.


End file.
